Harley Benton DC Review: Multiple Upgrades and One Year of Use
When I first reviewed my Harley Benton DC guitar, I was still blown away by the novelty of having such a nice instrument for such an affordable price. Admittedly, after the initial excitement wore off, I quickly realized that some serious upgrades would be forthcoming, lest I wind up with an obnoxiously large paperweight. So what have I changed, and what would I do differently if I had to buy another?
But first:
Do You Have to Upgrade Your Budget Guitar?
When you buy an instrument for an insane deal, you have two possible outcomes. The first is that you’ve just purchased a complete piece of crap that’s unsalvagable without replacing pretty much everything on it. The second is that you have a useable instrument that isn’t particularly great but could be great with the right modifications.
If you’ve found yourself in the first situation, that sucks, bro. If you consider yourself to have managed the second, congratulations, now you need to make an honest assessment of your playing ability. Are you so new to guitar that you can make a five-thousand-dollar Gibson sound like a faulty muffler? Or are you an experienced player who can tell the difference between quality and crap?
New players, of course, deserve to start on something decent, or they’ll likely give up. So if you’re new, find someone who knows what they’re talking about to help you weigh your purchase. If everything looks good, buy it and play it.
If you’re an intermediate to advanced player, consider upgrading a few things that tend to suck on cheap instruments. These include:
Electronics
Pickups
Fret heights
Intonation
Aesthetics
You can count on musical instrument retailers to try to make a profit, however cheap their products may be. This means they’ll be cutting corners wherever possible. Disreputable brands are likely to cut them pretty much everywhere, from the tuners to fretwork to the pickups. Better brands may make compromises only where quality isn’t essential.
Electronics and pickups are important in any guitar, but they can be replaced, so they aren’t the most important. This is why you usually see flat, weak pickups in brands like Harley Benton, SX, and Glarry. These companies understand that you’ll probably replace your pickups with ones that cost nearly as much as the whole guitar.
I don’t mention Firefly here, by the way, because when I got some work done on my Harley Benton, a tech swore to me that Fireflies are almost always bad, as they cheap out on everything.
In any case, fretwork and playability are the most essential aspects of an instrument. Without a reliable neck, net, and fretboard, you’re polishing a turd. Uneven frets, on the other hand, can be fixed for a moderate fee.
My Alterations
Fret Leveling
As I mentioned in my previous post, my Harley Benton felt great out of the box. Some fret buzzing, though, became annoying when I tuned down to my normal C-B standard range. I had two of the frets leveled, and the problem seemed to go away for good.
New Bridge Pickup
The Roswell bridge pickup I originally got kind of sucked. Don’t listen to the glowing reviews online. It was weak and couldn’t handle metal at all. Interestingly, the neck—an identical pickup—sounded great to me on low tunings. Perhaps this is because it handles darker frequencies better.
I only, therefore, replaced the bridge, and I put a Seymour Duncan JB in it. Now it sounds much hotter, and there’s a noticeable volume difference between the two pickups.
Switch Electronics
My selector switch, not surprisingly, appeared to be cheap Chinese garbage, and it quickly frayed or malfunctioned. I replaced it so I wouldn’t have to worry about reliability when switching pickups.
Aesthetics
You might think I’m an idiot for this one, but I think it’s actually really important to mention. The look of my DC really started to bother me after a while. In order to not get sued, Harley Benton slightly modifies its guitars. On the DC, the body is thicker, and the top horn is asymmetrical and further forward than a Gibson SG.
The pickguard is small, and this is fine on a regular SG like Tony Iommi uses. But on a slightly offset guitar, the whole thing looks kind of janky. I couldn’t find anything on Harley Benton’s website to help me install a full-body one that I prefer, so I simply made one myself from a thin, adhesive-sided plastic. Now it’s balanced better, and my OCD can rest for a while.
Tones
The guitar I have now is at least as good as a high-end Epiphone or any other everyman instrument you might use for doom, black metal, or shoegaze. It isn’t as neurotically well set up as a high-end Gibson or even an ESP equivalents, but I’m not John Mayer—I don’t play clean in front of tens of thousands of people.
It handles distortion incredibly well, and it cleans up nicely for what it is. For me, the real selling point of the HB DC was that it had coil-splitting humbuckers and a tone knob, providing the maximum versatility for my money.
Was It Worth It?
So, would I do it again, instead of just buying an Epiphone at Guitar Center? Honestly, probably not—except to make more content like this. All things considered, I probably spent about 400 dollars, and I have an awesome instrument now that I record with regularly.
But I also spent hours working on the pickups, waiting for techs, and designing my own pickguard. Time is money, and I arguably lost the 100-dollar difference between Harley Benton and Epiphone just waiting for things to happen. I could have just gotten what I wanted to start with.
That being said, I have a much stronger emotional attachment to this guitar. It’s my guitar, and there’s nothing else like it. I put work into it, and it paid off. And I suppose you can’t put a price tag on that.
Pros:
Is good now
Looks cool
Is my unique guitar
Slightly cheaper than an Epiphone or Viper
I get to act like I know about guitar upgrades
Cons:
Work and knowledge required
Waiting for repairs
Doesn’t look like a classic Gibson
Sorting out issues
Upgrades are expensive
Lost time
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